


tearing down the boulevard

by awkwardsorta



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-03
Updated: 2009-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardsorta/pseuds/awkwardsorta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Gabe Saporta character study!</p>
            </blockquote>





	tearing down the boulevard

Tearing down the boulevard  
Looking for the heart of Saturday night

 

 

Gabe isn't looking for something, exactly, it's more like he's vaguely hoping to someday stumble upon it. The fact that he doesn't know what it is, well that's not too much of a problem right now, at least, he thinks he'll realise what it was he wasn't looking for when he trips over it.

So he goes out to clubs and grinds on skinny scene kids because it makes the girls fan their faces and the boys look envious. Gabe likes the androgynous ones the best, the aloof girls and the pretty boys. When he gets bored he hits on his friends and they laugh it off; Gabe, according to his girlfriend, is the best example of one's bark being worse than one's bite that she's ever seen. He's pretty sure she means that his obnoxious front is worse than the warm hearted reality. Or maybe he just isn't as creepy as he ought to be. Either way, he's sometimes pathetically grateful to her for giving him that chance in the first place.

He's sort of pathetically grateful to his band, too, but it tends to get eclipsed by a frantic feeling like Gabe's on the edge of a cliff, balancing above mediocrity and rejection and all the thoughts that plagued him in the early hours of the morning, Before Cobra. He doesn't admit to anyone the idea that his band are the only thing keeping him from windmilling off into the void. Then Pete says the same thing about Patrick, and Gabe feels like running screaming in the opposite direction in case Pete knows Gabe's secret. Later, in fact, Gabe literally does run screaming away from Pete, but he's so drunk he doesn't remember in the morning and has the whole scene related back to him by Victoria. Apparently he collapsed into her arms and begged her to hide his soul from Pete Wentz.

Gabe thinks, what the fuck, but Victoria shrugs and says that didn't sound that odd to her actually.

Yes, Gabe knows what he has. He's still waiting for that stumbling moment though. He doesn't find it at the bottom of a tequila bottle, or the bottom of San Jose, not in Grey Goose, or the third bottle of wine of the night, he doesn't find it down the throat of the last friend he made out with, in a night sky or on a bus ceiling and he finds everything he could wish for in his girlfriend's smile but he confesses that he doesn't find that other thing.

There's this weird moment when he thinks he's found it in the scrawled words on a whiteboard, the laughter of his band, and the scratched silence of his voice. It's like being hit by a bus, but it only lasts for a fraction of a second and then it's gone again, and while Gabe feels a little overwhelmed, it's not an epiphany as such. So he looks into the camera, laughs soundlessly and keeps waiting (hoping).

Other nights, nights when he's spinning around and falling over and embarrassing himself and declaring his love for his band, he'll tell himself that if he only drinks that shot or smokes that drug or climbs that wall or kisses that boy, he'll find - that thing. Sometimes he tries telling this to other people, but they don't know what he's talking about either, so they talk him down or cry encouragement and, anyway, he's never alone.

Gabe has a recurring dream- he goes into the office and the moment he steps through the door he gets a feeling of dread, and he always tries to wake up. He never does though, not until he's been frozen out by his band, not until the staff, his friends, stare at him with pitying eyes. Only then does he thrash into consciousness, hitting pillows onto the floor and kicking his girlfriend. It's a shitty dream: not horrifying enough to be a nightmare, never lucid enough to be empowering, and Gabe never knows how to deal with it. He wraps his arms around his girlfriend and clings pathetically and in the light of day it's never as bad.

He thinks about the dream sometimes when they're drinking- when they're off their heads. Not consciously, as such, but the same feeling of dread flashes across his chest and he laughs louder and longer than everyone else until it goes away. It's never hard to laugh longer and louder than his band, but that's something else he tries not to dwell on. Gabe doesn't think he's a dick- or, at least, he thinks he tries quite hard not to be and that's as much as people seem to ask for. He also doesn't think that he should care what other people think, and that's why he wears what he wants and dances to Britney without irony. It's just a happy coincidence that Alex and Ryland do the same.

It's a happy coincidence that Nate and Victoria enjoy the company of larger than life, neon coloured musicians, and that William enjoys the comfort of a hand on his hip, male or female, and that Gabe's girlfriend knows all the dance moves to Pop. These things happened without Gabe doing a thing and if sometimes Gabe needs to broadcast all the happy coincidences to the world, well the others don't seem to mind. If sometimes he wishes they wanted to do the same, well, anyway, there's still the bottom of a tequila bottle to find.

It's not anything that would interest a psychologist or a therapist, it's nothing deep or profound, even if it is intangible. Maybe he'll never get it, maybe it'll never be there under his metaphorical feet. Perhaps in ten years Gabe will turn around and catch a glimpse of himself in a mirror and for that brief second he will look twenty five again. It'll be like the last ten years never happened, he'll experience the rush of not knowing anything but feeling like you've lived a lifetime, he'll taste vodka on his tongue and he'll hear Usher in his head and the next person he sees will look like someone he toured with, once upon a time. And maybe he'll feel that sinking feeling again, like this perfect situation can't last forever, or maybe he'll look up at the ceiling and wonder where this feeling like he forgot something came from.

Gabe can see the connection between the inability to take himself seriously and the inability to work out exactly what is it is that could be missing from his life. That doesn't mean he can fix either. But it doesn't mean that there is no hope. Gabe just sort of believes that this high will last long enough and then when he crashes there will be people there to give him a shake and a kick and pick him back up out of the gutter. At least, he knows he'd do that for them. Has done it for some of them already.

He stands up in front of an arena full of screaming kids who tell him they love him, idolise him, want to be him or sleep with him or do things Gabe knows he didn't know about when he was fifteen, and, jesus. Gabe is not ready to be a role model. Maybe during Midtown he thought he was but not now, not when he's figured out how much he hasn't figured out yet. He's only relieved that he is one fifth of a band who get it a lot more than he does. Maybe that balances things out.

Gabe doesn't ever think that maybe they're looking for something too. It's inconceivable. The combined self assurance and comfort with themselves is enough to carry Gabe for the rest of his life. That wouldn't work if they felt like Gabe does. He thinks some of his friends do, but not his band. It's a comforting belief, really, it's the reason that he's not looking for anything. Not actively. It's the reason he's not going out of his mind, anyway.

When the bad news comes about his throat, Gabe is scared, and worried, but his whole world does not come crashing down around him like people think it will. There's a sort of stirring in his stomach, like he's going to figure something out, but after a week Gabe can't quite pick it out of a line up of other things stirring his stomach, and then after another week he's forgotten about it altogether. For those first few days though, he feels almost grateful to the cyst. It's like someone stands up and says, _hey, that thing you think you might find one day? It exists._ So Gabe waves and says thanks and the irony is that he maybe stops worrying so much.

The songs for the new album come as easily as the last three did, and Gabe feels no less blessed. He tries not to say this out loud too much, doesn't want to seem too cocky or too earnest, still doesn't really want people to think he's a dick. The others keep the scales level too, and if the whole thing seems like it's too much to handle right now, well that's why Gabe's not a solo artist.

What he's looking for, it's not in the happy face that Victoria makes when they give her a new keytar for Christmas, it's not in the beams of sunshine making bright white squares on a new tour bus, and it's not in the cries of five hundred people as they put their fists in the air for him. It's not going to be somewhere obvious, and it's not going to be anywhere Gabe looks. That's why he steps back, climbs on the drum riser, jumps so high he almost knocks himself out, and forgets it all until the next lot of 2AM horrors. There's too much to be getting on with - wires to trip over, eyes to meet, microphones to share, shoulders to grip. And anyway, he's never alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks [](http://heartequals.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://heartequals.livejournal.com/)**heartequals** as ever for the help although mistakes are probably mine because she hasn't read all of it. The title is from a Tom Waits song that gave me the inspiration in the first place. This is for my Neelyface because she is the strongest sweetest girl I've met, and I said I'd write her fic if she did her homework /o\ I KEEP MY PROMISES.


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